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Vinyl Versus CD, What happens When You Transfer Vinyl digitally to CD, then?

post #1 of 9
5/28/06 at 3:21am
Thread Starter 
To the people who prefer the sound of vinyl (It's been so long since I heard a record, I can't offer an opinion, one way or the other) suppose vinyl is either transferred directly digitally or by analog (yes you can do this- I use to produce records a while ago) from a record player to a CD absolutely flat without any remastering or adjustment to the sound. Are you then saying that this recording now on a CD will still not sound as good as the record played on a decent record player or does it depend on the CD player?
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post #2 of 9
5/28/06 at 3:37am
I have been surprised with how good a pure vinyl rip can sound when burned to a pure CDR. Steve Hoffman has said on his forums countless times that he finds it incredible that this phenomenon exists, and I would definitely find somebody of his aptitude quite credible. He has claimed countless times that when doing vinyl-to-CDR rips he has heard some pretty resounding things.

I have never prefered a CDR of a vinyl over the original vinyl itself, but I have definitely prefered the CDR over an original CD copy. Kind of Blue is a good example. I have many MINT copies of it on LP, and I compared it recently to both the SACD and the CD. The mint LP won overall, but the CDR of the vinyl came in 2nd place, with the SACD and the CD, respectively, trailing behind.
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post #3 of 9
5/28/06 at 3:39am
My experience of both vinyl and SACD/DVD-A so far has suggested that CD-Audio does not really match up in sound quality.

I suppose, if the CD you record follows the 16bit/44.1khz standard, one could argue that it has the same limitations of all CDs when compared to vinyl. However, I would think that a 24/96 transfer to a digital format like FLAC should really be just as good as vinyl.
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post #4 of 9
5/28/06 at 4:24am
In theory. Because of mastering differences though transfering a vinyl straight to DVD-A would not utilise the advantages it has. Dynamic range etc. Also because one of the biggest so called limiting factors is the analogue to digital conversion it won't sound the same anymore. I frequently transfer vinyl to cd for my parents. The sonics always change ever so slightly. But because some of the major differences are the mastering processes vinyl goes through it'll still retain a lot of the vinyl sound.
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post #5 of 9
5/28/06 at 4:35am
Thread Starter 

What do you attribute this too?

Your comments are both really interesting. What do you attribute the difference in audio quality to- the makeup of the CD player as opposed to the record player or the makeup of vinyl to CD or both? As an aside, one thing people told me at the CD remastering places I use to use when I did rock & blues record production a decade ago, was that when the original master recording tapes couldn't be found, they made the CD master direct from the vinyl, but remastered & they all claimed the sound of the remastered CD was better then the vinyl. How true this was I don't know, they obviously were biased.

One thing I should have mentioned in my initial post & I'm not exactly clear what the answer is, let's say that an oldie album is being issued on vinyl but as a master tape could not be found, a CD or DAT master was sent instead for the vinyl record. Do you guys still think that this vinyl record transferred from a digital source will still sound better then a CD of it taken from a digital source?

Without commenting on sound quality, as a baby boomer, I had over 1000 albums which I've gladly replaced by CDs & got rid of my record player 20 years ago. For me between scratching records every time I lifted the needle, albeit somehow I was always able to put it on the beginning of the track & just having to get up to skip tracks I didn't like, I don't miss records at all. As an example, you could listen to Sargeant Pepper & then always have to get up & spoil the mood to skip that "Within You, Without You". Then you'd have to get up & change the side. To me CDs are so much easier to enjoy & each CD sounds as fresh as the first time played (unless you have a skip) & I wouldn't say that was true with vinyl.
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post #6 of 9
5/28/06 at 4:43am
A couple of years back, Universal Music Group Hong Kong (UMG-HK) released about 10 SACD titles that were rumored to be sourced from pristine vinyl records. The rumor persisted because UMG-HK's vault was seriously damaged several years ago in a huge fire and UMG-HK's ads for these SACDs actually thank a gentleman for providing prinstine vinyl records to the company (no reason given).

Given the above, these SACDs sound amazingly good. I don't know who did the mastering or any other processing (the liner notes didn't mention any technical information) on these SACDs, but what Steve Hoffman mentioned on his forum is true in this case. Perhaps it's the skill of the remastering engineer or maybe it's the SACD format.
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post #7 of 9
5/28/06 at 3:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hershon2000
Your comments are both really interesting. What do you attribute the difference in audio quality to- the makeup of the CD player as opposed to the record player or the makeup of vinyl to CD or both?
I attribute it to the sample-rate and bit-depth of CD-Audio being insufficient to convey as realistic a sound as vinyl or SACD/DVD-A.
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post #8 of 9
5/28/06 at 3:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hershon2000
As an aside, one thing people told me at the CD remastering places I use to use when I did rock & blues record production a decade ago, was that when the original master recording tapes couldn't be found, they made the CD master direct from the vinyl, but remastered & they all claimed the sound of the remastered CD was better then the vinyl. How true this was I don't know, they obviously were biased.
Absolutely true. With time, the dynamic range and attack/decay time of the audio on a tape will fade, especially with frequent playing and when the tape material is not so great. One of the few tapes I liked was Metal or Metaloxide. They didn't suffer from this problem as quickly as say Chrome tapes. And shorter length tapes were also more robust.
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post #9 of 9
5/29/06 at 6:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hershon2000
Are you then saying that this recording now on a CD will still not sound as good as the record played on a decent record player or does it depend on the CD player?
To my ears the digitized (M-Audio Transit) version sounds essentially the same as the original vinyl. And why wouldn't it? The redbook digital really has a vastly better resolution than any vinyl system, contrary to what is often claimed.


Regards,

L.
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